"One of the most common problems teachers face in modern education is unmotivated students. Allen N. Mendler's Motivating Students Who Don't Care: Proven Strategies to Engage All Learners, 2nd Edition provides practical strategies for teachers to motivate struggling students. From emphasizing effort to sparking enthusiasm for learning, each chapter covers one key process to boost student motivation. Disinterested, unmotivated students can be discouraging to hardworking teachers, but Mendler's proven strategies can nurture enthusiasm and excitement for learning in any classroom and reach even the most challenging students"--
This book is a comprehensive and practical guide for reconnecting with discouraged students and reawakening their excitement and enthusiasm for learning. With proven strategies from the classroom, Dr. Mendler identifies five effective processes you can use to reawaken motivation in students who aren’t prepared, don’t care, and won’t work. These processes include emphasizing effort, creating hope, respecting power, building relationships, and expressing enthusiasm.
Every day, teachers face the challenge of motivating struggling learners. In this must-have book, Barbara R. Blackburn, author of the bestseller Rigor Is Not a Four-Letter Word, shares how you can finally solve this problem and make your classroom a rigorous place where all students want to succeed. You’ll learn practical strategies for... understanding extrinsic and intrinsic motivation; building a trusting relationship with students; using praise and positive feedback effectively; empowering students and helping them own their learning; moving students toward a growth mindset; communicating high expectations for students; engaging all students in your lessons; scaffolding so all students will want to improve; helping students be resilient and not fear failure; and celebrating diverse groups of students. Each chapter is filled with a variety of examples and tools that you can use immediately. Bonus: Many of the tools are also available as free eResources on our website, www.routledge.com/9781138792432, so you can easily download and print them for classroom use.
“Clinical psychologist Price offers one of the most significant books of the year in this new look at an old problem—the underperforming teenage boy… Price’s book brings an important voice to a much needed conversation.” —Library Journal (Starred review) On the surface, capable teenage boys may look lazy. But dig a little deeper, writes child psychologist Adam Price in He’s Not Lazy, and you’ll often find conflicted boys who want to do well in middle and high school but are afraid to fail, and so do not try. This book can help you become an ally with your son, as he discovers greater self-confidence and accepts responsibility for his future. Why are some teenage boys unmotivated? Why do they spend endless hours playing video games or glued to their phones and social media sites instead of studying? Is this a sign of laziness or something more troubling? As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Adam Price has found that teenage boys are extremely sensitive to the stress of our competitive achievement-oriented culture—one that has created a pressure cooker for today’s adolescent. In He’s Not Lazy, Dr. Price, a renowned expert on ADHD and learning disabilities, explains how to help a boy who is not lazy, but rather, is conflicted about trying his best. Dr. Price will guide you to discover hidden obstacles to your son’s success, set expectations, and empower him to accept responsibility for his own future. He’s Not Lazy will help you become your son’s ally, as he discovers greater self-confidence and becomes more self-reliant. Rather than reacting to pressure by shunning academic responsibilities altogether or propping up fear-based rebellion with justifications like “I am not going to be one of those nerds who have no life,” or “Tests don’t measure intelligence or help you learn, so what’s the point of studying for them?” your teenage son can work with you using the guidance in this book.
A top leadership consultant says: Stop trying to motivate people! Find a powerful alternative to the carrot and stick in this science-driven guide. It's frustrating for everyone involved and it just doesn’t work. You can’t motivate people—they are already motivated, but generally in superficial and short-term ways. In this book, Susan Fowler builds upon the latest scientific research on the nature of human motivation to lay out a tested model and course of action that will help leaders guide their people toward the kind of motivation that not only increases productivity and engagement but that gives them a profound sense of purpose and fulfillment. Fowler argues that leaders still depend on traditional carrot-and-stick techniques because they haven’t understood their alternatives and don’t know what skills are necessary to apply the new science of motivation. Her Optimal Motivation process shows leaders how to move people away from dependence on external rewards and help them discover how their jobs can meet the deeper psychological needs—for autonomy, relatedness, and competence—that science tells us result in meaningful and sustainable motivation. Optimal Motivation has been proven in organizations all over the world—Fowler’s clients include Microsoft, CVS, NASA, the Catholic Leadership Institute, H&R Block, Mattel, and dozens more. Throughout this book, she illustrates how each step of the process works using real-life examples—and offers a groundbreaking answer for leaders who want to get motivation right!
Overcoming Student Apathy: Motivating Students for Academic Success provides a candid look into the hearts and minds of many of today's struggling students. Frustrated teachers and administrators typically stop at labeling the symptoms shown by these students: apathy, low motivation, laziness. Overcoming Student Apathy clarifies the situation, while proposing tips to rise to the challenge. Apathy plagues many of today's middle and high school classrooms, and the problem will not spontaneously disappear. Teachers must be willing to move beyond the 'they don't care' attitude to discover how we can eradicate this nemesis to learning. Overcoming Student Apathy guides the reader toward success with the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the devalued, and the demoralized. Eight archetypes are used in narrative form to represent the various forms that apathy assumes in our classrooms (e.g., The Rebel, The Downtrodden, The Invisible). Teachers will identify with both the students and the teachers portrayed in the book; thus, transferring understanding and applications back to their own classrooms.
Written specifically for teachers, Motivating Students to Learn offers a wealth of research-based principles on the subject of student motivation for use by classroom teachers. Now in its fourth edition, this book discusses specific classroom strategies by tying these principles to the realities of contemporary schools, curriculum goals, and classroom dynamics. The authors lay out effective extrinsic and intrinsic strategies to guide teachers in their day-to-day practice, provide guidelines for adapting to group and individual differences, and discuss ways to reach students who have become discouraged or disaffected learners. This edition features new material on the roles that classroom goal setting, developing students’ interest, and teacher-student and peer relationships play in student motivation. It has been reorganized to address six key questions that combine to explain why students may or may not be motivated to learn. By focusing more closely on the teacher as the motivator, this text presents a wide range of motivational methods to help students see value in the curriculum and lessons taught in the classroom.
The Smart Classroom Management Way is a collection of the very best writing from ten years of Smart Classroom Management (SCM). It isn't, however, simply a random mix of popular articles. It's a comprehensive work that encompasses every principle, theme, and methodology of the SCM approach. The book is laid out across six major areas of classroom management and includes the most pressing issues, problems, and concerns shared by all teachers. The underlying SCM themes of accountability, maturity, independence, personal responsibility, and intrinsic motivation are all there and weave their way throughout the entirety of the book. Together, they form a simple, unique, and sometimes contrarian approach to classroom management that anyone can do. Whether you're an elementary, middle, or high school teacher, The Smart Classroom Management Way will give you the strategies, skills, and know-how to turn any group of students into the motivated, well-behaved class you love teaching.
There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom. Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.
One of the most vexing problems confronting educators today is the chronic achievement gap between black male students and their peers. In this inspiring and thought-provoking book, veteran educator Baruti K. Kafele offers a blueprint for lifting black males up and ensuring their success in the classroom and beyond. Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life offers proven strategies for getting black male students in middle school and high school to value learning, improve their grades, and maintain high standards for themselves. The author shows how simple but powerful measures to instill self-worth in young black males can not only raise these students' achievement, but also profoundly alter their lives for the better. This book will help you to help students * Reverse the destructive effects of negative influences, whether among peers or in the popular culture; * Surmount adverse conditions at home or in their communities; * Participate in mentorship programs with successful black male adults; and * Take pride in their heritage by learning about great figures and achievements in black history. Whether your school is urban or rural, all-black or mixed, you'll find this book to be an insightful resource that addresses the root causes of low achievement among young black males and offers a clear path to overcoming them.
